A digital still camera (DSC) or video camera (camcorder) has a sensor that is covered by a color filter array (CFA) to create pixel locations. A DSC typically uses red, green and blue (RGB) filters to create their image. Most current camcorders typically use cyan, magenta, yellow and green (CMYG) filters for the same purpose.
A conventional sensor is a charge-coupled device (CCD) or complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). An imaging system focuses a scene onto the sensor and electrical signals are generated that correspond to the scene colors that get passed through the colored filters. Electronic circuits amplify and condition these electrical signals for each pixel location and then digitize them. Algorithms in the camera then process these digital signals and perform a number of operations needed to convert the raw digital signals into a pleasing color image that can be shown on a color display or sent to a color printer.
Each color camera has a unique sensor, CFA, and analog electronics system. The sensor and CFA have part-to-part variations. Accordingly, the electronic system needs to be calibrated for each camera. The goal is to make a “real world” scene captured with different cameras look the same when rendered on a display device. In order to calibrate an individual camera, the properties of the individual camera's primary color channels (CMYG for a camcorder; RGB for a DSC) need to be measured so that the individual camera's response to known colors can be quantized.
In the past, to calibrate a DSC, several pictures were taken with the DSC of objects with different colors. The more colors acquired, the better the calibration would be. The data from these pictures would then be transferred to a computer for analysis, and then parameters are adjusted within the DSC based on the analysis so that the DSC produces the best and most realistic colors. As described above, this was necessary because there are part to part differences in each camera such as there are slight variations in each sensor.
The main drawback of the previous systems which took multiple pictures is that they were slow. It takes time to take a number of pictures of different objects with different colors. It also takes time to transfer the data to a computer for analysis and calibration because typically the connection is slow.